Suche:the solitude

Two decades at the highest level in this industry is a landmark really reached. Pig&Dan celebrate this major milestone with an immense, twenty-track album project ‘20 Years: Pig&Dan’ of which this eight track, 2 X 12” vinyl sampler cherry-picks some of the finest moments.

Released via their long-standing record label ELEVATE, the album delivers some of the duo's most forward-thinking techno productions to date. It is a remarkable opus of intelligent, cutting-edge dance music from two artists who came together back in 2002 to form what would become one of the most prolific and globally revered acts in electronic music.

Unyielding in their commitment to originality, eclecticism and tradition, the album will feature an array of brand-new Pig&Dan productions, alongside a selection of new 'update mixes' of some of the duo's most celebrated anthems.

Speaking about the twentieth-anniversary project Pig&Dan commented:

"It's almost hard to take in that we are celebrating a 20-year milestone of producing and performing together. This project features an array of fresh unreleased euphoric productions that hold a sound that we hope represents our growth in sound. We've also included a selection of new, updated 2022 versions of some of our more celebrated productions from the last two decades. We really see it as more of a statement than an album, hence the fact there's a track that represents every year on our musical journey."

On their debut LP “Pome”, Liai has given us a stunning work of expertly crafted rhythmic ambience, inspired by the intimacy and solitude of the midwestern countryside. Having grown up in rural Missouri, Liai channels the mixed feelings that can accompany solo contemplation in nature - expansiveness, sentimentality, vulnerability and eeriness. This deeply personal set of tracks took 3 years to make, revealed in the precision of sound design and use of space. The work feels at once familiar and organic, yet technical and futuristic, almost alien - a product of digital melodies, granular processing and frequent sampling of their own previous works.

Bio:
By way of rural Missouri to Chicago to New York, Liai melds sonic elements of each city from pastoral, expansive drones to Chicago experimentalism and the rhythmic ambient that’s arriving on both coasts of the US. With two albums forthcoming, their work marks the meeting point of experimental sound design with emotional pop-like melodies.

On August 26th Gwilym Gold releases his third album, Blue Garden, on SA Recordings. Alongside the record we are pitching the beautiful Blue Garden. Gwilym began playing improvised music as a pianist and may be fondly remembered as the singer and keyboardist in psychedelic pop trio Golden Silvers but has since worked widely as a soloist. 2012 saw the release of his high-concept solo piece Tender Metal which was composed and released using Bronze; a new music technology which Gold created with producer Lexxx alongside Mick Grierson. Using Bronze, a song is enabled to rebuild itself on each playback from the musical seeds and ground sown by the writer. Music composed with Bronze is not restricted to just one playback possibility, it is a dynamic, ever-transforming representation of itself where the artist builds a new model as part of each song’s writing process. Gwilym has since collaborated with artists such as Arca, Jai Paul, Philippe Parreno and Nicolas Becker, introducing them to this new technology. One of the hopes for Bronze is that it brings some of the characteristics of performance back into previously inert musical documents, and alongside his work with Bronze, Gwilym has maintained a wide performance practice. Performing recently alongside musicians such as Dave Okumu, Tom Skinner and Lucinda Chua and collaborating with artists Eddie Peake and Holly Blakey. His two recent collections of songs, A Paradise and Sky Blue Room, stem from this, the second being recorded almost entirely live in three days alongside Okumu and drummer Dan See. Blue Garden is Gwilym’s first collection written and recorded entirely in solitude and he hoped to unburden the process of anything beyond the most primary elements. Setting up a sort of hybrid harp in a small isolated room, the aim was to let the songs flow out unadorned and record them as they were. The only addition to the album is the accompanying sound of rivers and birdsong by sound recordist and founding member of Cabaret Voltaire, Chris Watson. Gwilym started to play the new album alongside Watson’s recording ‘The Drinking Boy’ which led him to reach out to Watson. Gwilym explains “I played it to a friend once I had recorded it with Chris’ field recordings, they said it almost sounded like the quarantine birds, there was a feeling of it being a little sanctuary”. The songs on Blue Garden were written during a bittersweet time, where Gold was experiencing moments of love, loss and rebirth. The album is a loose and abstract exploration of love in all its forms, how familial, platonic and romantic love are all intertwined.

With ‘Terrain,’ Joachim Spieth presents the fourth long player on his Affin imprint.
The follow-up album to ‘Ousia’ (2021), ‘Terrain,’ reflects on the human relationship with nature. The album title is a reference to a musical language that layers Spieth’s music production practices and intimacy with nature.
‘Terrain’ was forged in deep solitude.“It’s an interplay of euphoric flashes and introspection” – says Spieth. The eight compositions take the listener into a captivating cascade of sonic textures resembling internal states fluctuations and emotional release. The tension between the organic warmth and static curves broads tones into liquified roars and empty spaces.
Unlike Spieth’s previous albums, ‘Terrain’ holds more intimate gestures and emotional sensibility. Soothing frequencies here are intended to create a state of awareness in the listener. It is a work of conceptual and emotional beauty, evoking a form of spatial imagery that is as grounding as elevating.

'Marasma Vussa is the Brainchild of Antonio Feola a long standing figure on the London music scene, Antonio has been running the Fish Factory Studio in Willesden, North London for over two decades now. Throughout the years, he has had a major role in helping many of the current lead players of the London scene have a place to record and define their sound.

Antonio's project Masmara has existed for over 30 years and here has found its place on record. Recorded on tape over time with some of the most sought after players in London and edited during the lockdown period, Vussa is an album of mind-bending deep, cosmic mediative jazz experiments. Boasting catchy melodies and heavy, heavy jazz breaks!'

Led by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Lee, RIPPED TO SHREDS emerge from the West Coast underground with their ferocious new album, 劇變 (Jubian). The death metal trailblazers unleash their most fully realized and visceral work yet. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Lee in his home studio, 劇變 (Jubian) proves to be RIPPED TO SHREDS at their most focused and refined. The album bursts wide open with “Violent Compulsion for Conquest,” an elegantly dark, new kind of chainsaw sound teeming with acidic vocals gnashing out lyrics inspired by the Mukden Incident. From its lightning-flash solos to those immensely killer echoing “Ough!”s, this absolute scather, according to Lee, was born to lead. Elsewhere, longtime RIPPED TO SHREDS fans will find the latest chapter of the ongoing ‘Sun Moon Holy Cult’ saga to be its most thrilling episode thus far.

Modern Rituals have announced their return with the release of upcoming new album, Cracking Of The Bulk. For a band who’ve tended to flesh out songs in the practice room and track live, the writing and recording of Modern Rituals’ third album was a disparate and protracted process. In cramped apartments and a secluded annex, sharing files over the internet and working on parts in solitude, the band introduced subtler tones from their last record, This Is The History. Yet still, this new direction is matched by an explosive frustration that gives it a unique balance of darker and lighter shades. Tour Dates:20th November - The Victoria Dalston, London 21st November - The Prince Albert, Brighton 22nd - The Crofters Rights, Bristol 23rd - Voodoo Daddys Showroom, Norwich 24th - Gorilla Studios, Hull 25th - Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds 26th - The Jericho Tavern, Oxford 27th - JT Soar, Nottingham


1. Mixx3ed 2. The Flow 3. Nails of Love 4. Wastrel 5. Western Cut 6. Scummeth 7. Incipit 8. Sonder 9. Dog Jerky Haiku 10. Perpetual Dawn

'WALKING ON A FLASHLIGHT BEAM' IS REISSUED FOR THE FIRST TIME
ON BLUE VINYL."It's often like the best film music..
distinctly dramatic, verging on gothic from the opening eerie noises... honours the
Pink Floyd branches of the Porcupine Tree" - Prog Magazine (UK)
Lunatic Soul is the solo project from Mariusz Duda, the creative force, lead singer
& talented multi-instrumentalist behind Poland's Progressive Rock shooting stars
'Riverside'.
'Walking On A Flashlight Beam' was the fourth album from Lunatic Soul. It served
as an incredibly emotional prequel to the first two Lunatic Soul albums & covers a
theme of self- imposed solitude & has a strong sense of foreboding with the
knowledge that the first two albums focus on death & the afterlife.
Commenting on his fourth opus in 2014, Duda said: "These are very dark &
intense compositions but very melodious too. I think it's one of the best things
I've ever written, if not the best one".
As with previous Lunatic Soul albums the artwork was created by the renowned
cover artist Travis Smith who has also created covers for the likes of 'Opeth' &
'Riverside'.
Lunatic Soul's 'Walking On A Flashlight Beam' will be issued via Kscope on 2LP
Blue Vinyl.

Built on the classic Black Sabbath formula of downtuned leaden heavy guitar riffs, coupled with soaring vocal lamentations, Solitude Aeturnus are the American masters of the classic epic doom metal style. The band's 1996 album Downfall saw them experiment with shorter song structures and more varied guitar sounds, never straying too far from the kind of epic doom with ravishing vocals that made them a cult favorite. This is the first time that Downfall is available on vinyl with the original cover art, which has been meticulously restored for this gatefold reissue.

Built on the classic Black Sabbath formula of downtuned leaden heavy guitar riffs, coupled with soaring vocal lamentations, Solitude Aeturnus are the American masters of the classic epic doom metal style. The band's 1996 album Downfall saw them experiment with shorter song structures and more varied guitar sounds, never straying too far from the kind of epic doom with ravishing vocals that made them a cult favorite. This is the first time that Downfall is available on vinyl with the original cover art, which has been meticulously restored for this gatefold reissue.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daniel Lanois, Loscil, K Leimer, Deaf Center, Tangerine Dream, Arvo Pärt Wake is a distillation and reflection of the work of three Portland musicians thrown, like the rest of the world, into forced isolation by the continually-mutating curse of a natural world in disequilibrium. The product of involuntarily inward-looking emotional landscapes, Wake emerged sounding surprisingly expansive and confident. The trio uses a variety of instruments –including harp, fretless bass, piano, and a variety of synthesizers– to conjure sparkling panoramas of the imagination that are deep-pooled and impressionistic, bracing yet comforting. Mike Grabarak and Joshua Ward have performed together for years as a duo under the moniker of Location Services, while Derek Hunter Wilson has primarily worked as a solo composer in the classical realm. For the Points Of No Return compilation, Beacon Sound's 50th release and a benefit for the Beirut Musicians Fund, they recorded a collaborative piece entitled "Interdependence In Solitude" that was so promising the label offered to release an album if they continued down the path they had started upon. The resulting eight songs are simply mesmerizing. Made during a period of change and upheaval in the world and society where many people were disconnected from others, the album is the product of a collage-like dialogue built on trust and patience. While the musicians couldn’t physically be together for much of this time, they began sending musical ideas to one another in a conversational back-and-forth that acted as an anchor of stability – something they found they could turn to and depend on when things felt uncertain elsewhere. This comfort zone led to some transcendent moments of experimentation. “Delicate Need”, for example, features recordings of exaggerated pizzicato that were sampled and then run back through processing effects, which were then subsequently performed live over the original track. As things became less risky on the Covid front, they would occasionally meet for backyard rehearsals. Indeed, a recording of one of these rehearsals became the basis for the opening track “Photo Aware”. Wake will be available later this summer as a limited edition LP, with design work by Berlin-based Studio Bernhardt. The cover painting was created by Portland artist Nate Ethington. Highlights: – Derek was invited by the artist Gregory Euclide (Bon Iver, Erased Tapes) to participate in his label project, Thesis, along with artists such as Benoit Pioulard, Loscil, and Julianna Barwick. – Derek‘s first and second albums as a solo artist were released by Beacon Sound (Travelogue, 2017; Steel, Wood, & Air, 2019). – Location Services likewise released their 2019 album Reincorporate on the label. – The artists plan to tour together in 2023. Cascadia release shows TBA. Bios: Location Services is the Portland-based project of multi-instrumentalist Mike Grabarek (Magic Fades) and harpist Joshua Ward. They’ve released music on Beacon Sound and Beer On The Rug. They perform both written and improvised music. Derek Hunter Wilson is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Portland. He has released two solo albums on Beacon Sound and has also collaborated with visual artist Gregory Euclide for his Thesis Project label, resulting in a split 10" with Spanish musician Rauelsson. He has additionally collaborated with poets Zachary Schomburg and Brandi Katherine Herrera for several sound and performance pieces. He has performed live on the West Coast and in Berlin, sharing the stage with artists such as Colleen, Amulets, and Liima.

Micah is a special one. His playing has a restlessly inventive and futuristic tilt while simultaneously remaining deeply rooted in the history of the music – all delivered with curiosity, patience, humor and care. I make a point to hear him as often as I can, as he always inspires and is constantly evolving. Micah is one of the most exciting musicians of his generation. One who has a unique style as well as all the tools needed to make a major contribution to the world of jazz piano.

"When we decided to produce Micah Thomas, the project involved a recording of five titles only. In the first part of an approximately one hour session, Micah beautifully played first takes of up to ten titles, with fantastic artistic fervor and great freshness. Taken by surprise, joy and admiration, we decided on the spur of the moment to change our initial plans, so we could capture the magic of that

session for a little longer. Here is the result, a 12 titles double vinyl that takes you back to October 31st, 2020 at Big Orange Sheep studio in Brooklyn, NY. Twelve songs when we encountered the art of Micah Thomas as a solo pianist for the first time."

PROLETARIJAT010 is the result of almost 4 decades of inspirational journey through the life captured by Sev Dah as a musical statement. This double LP is inspired by various music during different periods, strange life events and struggling life on the edge between acceptance and solitude. From Detroit influences to shaking 909 sexy-vibes over to machinery working-class Techno - Sev Dah spiced this LP up with his own (already recognizable) way of processing sounds. This LP is dedicated to the people and the city of Sarajevo and their heroic fight against the fascist occupation during WW2.

Early fans, nostalgic, lounge-chill-world or deep house lovers... this new compilation is made for you! Relive the history of the Buddha-Bar through the titles that create the birth of the Lounge & Chill, melodic house and ethnic house movement. Among them are many forgotten tracks. A magic and captivating selection mixed by Ravin

How We Function' is the debut album from London grunge trio BERRIES. Live shows and festival appearances in the UK planned for throughout the year to support the release, including 2000Trees and Kendal Calling; shows in Germany supporting The Subways in May and at Frank Turner's Lost Evenings V Festival in September. Plus support tour with Jim Bob from Carter in November and their own UK shows in October. RELEASE TIMELINE: TRACK 1 - 'Wall Of Noise' - 11th March 2022 - single Wall of Noise is the latest offering from BERRIES debut album due to be released in July. Lyrically the song gives a nod to self-doubt and how solitude can heighten and affect these feelings. Feeling lost or confused can produce the noisiest thoughts in your mind and that’s what BERRIES wanted to convey in this song. They push dynamics and layers to create the "noise" that so many people are often trying to escape in their own thoughts and the development of that "noise" throughout the song. TRACK 2 - 'We Are Machines' - 13th May 2022 - single + announce of album This single launches the album campaign for BERRIES' debut 'How We Function'. It is a song about struggling in a demanding society and being exploited by people who have little empathy or concern for your well-being. The song touches on how we are forced to become machines, trying to maintain an impossible level of perfection and how we need to fight against this. Admitting we are only human and finding the strength to stand up and push for balance and rights. In turn, becoming a different type of machine.

After the intriguing collaborative efforts on their debut EP “Tender Trance” and the follow-up EP “Sueño”, DJ Gigola and Kev Koko are back with a 3-track record. Continuing their hybrid production style, this time, they are joined by rapper Perra Inmunda. Perra’s fast paced flow and staccato rhymes blend seamlessly with Kev Koko’s signature groove. Together with DJ Gigola's airy, ethereal chorus vocals, the result is a playful exploration of modern music that picks up right where the previous EPs left off: blurring lines between techno, pop, and now also, rap. Lyrically, the EP examines three different aspects of love. Sweaty dances on the floor, kisses lost on the way home and the solitude of being left unanswered; it seems only fitting they chose the title “No Es Amor”. The EP will be released on "Live From Earth Klub" on 8 April 2022 in both digital and physical formats.

Ehrlicher, epischer Doom der Marke Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus und Trouble aus Deutschland steht als kommender Release der italienischen Metal-Schmiede Cruz Del Sur an.
Echte Drums und echte Gitarren; keine "Plug-Ins" oder "Schummeleien", die Band wollte den Geist der Auftritte einfangen, ohne sich auf Technik zu verlassen. Aufgrund der weltweiten Pandemie wurde das Album in verschiedenen Sessions von Herbst 2019 bis Sommer 2020 aufgenommen und landete schließlich in den Händen von Dennis Koehne für Mixing und Mastering. Koehne hatte mit WHEEL bereits an ihrer Coverversion von Roky Erickson's 'Night Of The Vampire' gearbeitet, die auf ihrem selbstbetitelten Debütalbum von 2010 zu finden war. Die neuen Songs konzentrieren sich mehr auf eine gute Struktur und eingängige Refrains. Der Sound ist viel härter und druckvoller als noch beim Vorgänger 'Icarus'.
'Preserved In Time' erscheint wahlweise als CD im Jewelcase oder LP (Black Vinyl).

Minru is the project of Caroline Blomqvist, a Swedish musician based in Berlin. Woven from light and shadow, the interplay of her folk and indie-rock blend appears from a personal space of finding life after death. On her debut LP »Liminality« she paints melody in soft tones, whispering secrets to navigate feelings of loss.

Built around winding layers of acoustic guitar, piano, and strings, Minru is a surprisingly uplifting and stirring testament to Blomqvist’s own suffering from the passing of someone close to her. Returning to Berlin from Sweden feelings of grief, confusion, and pain travelled with her, and these emotions prompted the journey both of and within the album, heard as a dreamlike actualisation of wandering lost between them. "I read that Carl Jung used the word "»Liminality«” to describe the psychological process of transitioning. I instantly felt seen; it reflected my own experience and the feelings I carried whilst making the album – a sense of the old certainties being gone, but the new not being quite there yet,” she says.

Defined as "the threshold separating one space from another" »Liminality« moves between feeling the ground beneath your feet fall away, fighting through the darkness and the doubt, and the emerging shades of hope and light as you painstakingly make peace with mortality and find yourself as a person again. "I am happy to have encapsulated this moment of time in sound," Blomqvist says, "it will always be there as a memory."

Flourishing from a preferred position of solitude, »Liminality« sees Blomqvist’s vision radiate with intensity from her home-based studio in Neukölln - a small, 2-room apartment with squeaky old wooden floors. Capturing the intimacy of the space, she recorded vocals and synth on gear partly borrowed from friends (to swiftly reunite it with its owners), and the songs flow with a stream of consciousness as feelings become entwined with melody. Time-restraint drew the process to a natural close, preventing Blomqvist from losing herself to experimentation. “Maybe I would have been stuck in »Liminality«, trying out sounds forever,” she suggests of the way ‘Into the well’s instrumental swims into a warm stream of synth pads. "It’s the cosiest moment on the album,” she says, “Cosy is a feeling I always strive for in life."

Finished and self-produced at a Berlin-Lichtenberg recording studio alongside musical friends (Povel Widestrand, Tobias Blessing, Sunniva Lilian Shaw Of-Tordarroch, Marlene Becher and Liv Solveig Wagner), the result is beautifully detailed and rich like the folk of her Swedish roots. First picking up a guitar as a kid and becoming obsessed with it, she would skip school to spend extra hours mastering the instrument, grappling to perfect the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ intro. “As a child I was fascinated by my dad’s acoustic guitars around the house and would hit the strings to make them sound,” she recalls. After attending music high school in Gothenburg and playing in bands during her teens, Blomqvist later moved to Germany. As well as enjoying walks at Tempelhofer Feld and coffee at Leuchtstoff café, she performed with Tuvaband, Adna, and Tara Nome Doyle and played in Berlin venues Loophole and Schokoladen, where music became her world. With the passing of time she felt a growing urge to find an outlet for her own songs; Minru was the answer along with her first »Yearnings« EP.

Now writing whenever she returns to Sweden, within the calm and stillness of her family’s mountainside cabin, her skilfully constructed arrangements summon the comforting atmosphere of home. “I hope listeners will feel inspired to slow down a bit, create, draw, cook something. Just be in the moment that is now.” »Liminality« is the kind of record that rewards attention. Give this album your time, it will give you its soul.

The past couple of years have provided an ideal breeding ground for periods of reflection. Of rediscovery. And for the reignition of dwindling flames. Perhaps this is why the meeting of Tom Churchill and 2Sox is the perfect match at the perfect time. A collision of minds stoking a fire that has sizzled away into a 12” slab of choice cuts. Introspective and deep, yet not forgetting what a dancefloor wants.

Tom started making music in the mid-90s, inspired by the house and techno records he was buying as a teenager growing up in Cardiff. Co-founder of cult 90’s label, Headspace Recordings and sister label Emoticon; Tom and partner Raeph Powell were responsible for some faultless releases in the 00’s. More recently, Tom has been one half of The Nuclear Family; a production, label and events project launched with Laurence Hughes in 2013. Much of what Tom has put his hand to over the years has been hot in demand. Incredibly, this is his first physical, solo release under his real name since 2002. Despite the 20 year gap, Tom’s enthuse for all things deep and electronic has arguably never been stronger.

“These tracks have been heavily inspired by two things - reconnecting with my surroundings and rediscovering my record collection - both of which have been made possible by the events over the past couple of years.” Tom says.

“As well as spending more time outdoors around my home on the west coast of Scotland, I recorded a lot of DJ mixes and radio shows during the first lockdown, which meant I spent a lot of time digging through older records. This reignited some creative energy that had been lying dormant for a while.

Before 2020 I’d been sporadically using a rented studio space to make music, but in that Spring I put together a basic, compact setup so I could work at home. My influences are pretty clear with these tracks - I’ve drawn on the palette of classic deep house, 90s techno and electro throughout - but while there are some retro elements and familiar sounds, I’ve tried to put my own twist on things. Being surrounded by nature and working exclusively on headphones has made for a more intimate sound, and these tracks are the most personal I’ve ever done.”

The music of Dewey Mahood is steadfast in its pursuit of transcendence. For the past two decades as Plankton Wat, Mahood has contoured his melodic guitar playing into wholly transfiguring pieces. His fluid compositions apply ethereal, elastic textures to grounded rhythmic grooves that recall the cosmic and the earthly in equal measure. Hidden Path is an album built on reflection and discovery, turning the thrill of exploring obscured passages into inward revelations. Originally presented as a limited cassette in 2017, and now presented on vinyl for the first time, remastered by Amy Dragon, Hidden Path is a distillation of Mahood's musical practice as a way of life, a patient celebration of the unexpected, unhurried and exhilarating.

Deluxe orange LP edition is limited to 500, jacket artwork features drawing by Dewey Mahood.

BT50 sees the return to the fold of XY0815.

Showcasing his ever-expanding palette, Gates Need Inputs Vol. I sees the Weimar based producer stepping away from the dancefloor.
Brighter in mood than previous contributions, the first volume of two, presents XY0815 displaying his typical finesse and restrained flex on electronica and downtempo.

Edition of 300 copies.

The remastered, repackaged set Music From Grizzly Man contains all of the out of print material Thompson recorded for the acclaimed documentary. Richard Thompson's score for “Grizzly Man” Werner Herzog's 2005 documentary film of real life and death in the Alaskan wilderness is one of the best-kept secrets in the British guitarist's epic canon: an instrumental masterpiece disguised as a movie soundtrack. Recorded over two days as Thompson played live in the studio to Herzog's footage – mostly alone, at times in chamber settings with cello, piano and percussion – these tenderly detailed melodies and quietly visceral improvisations are cinema in their own right, rendered with pictorial instinct and the dazzling technique forged in Thompson's lifelong passage through traditional folk, psychedelia, North African modes and intensely personal songwriting. Here is Thompson at his natural best – finger-picking dance; snake-curl twang and singing-wire harmonics – in a solo clarity that runs from jig-like joy to deep-note meditation, the "Main Title" blues march with its echoes of Fairport Convention's "Sloth" to the long night of "Treadwell No More," a harrowing darkness in slicing treble and tremolo shiver. Produced by guitarist Henry Kaiser, Grizzly Man is a record of powerful solitude as bold and majestic as the land in Herzog's film; as intimate as prayer and essential Richard Thompson.

Giacomo D’Attorre – lead singer of Clever Square – has been through a lot of late. With his band. In his personal life. Even just with the state of the world. This fire has fuelled Clever Square’s new record Secret Alliance, eleven tracks that explore feelings of frustration, disillusionment, and disconnection, and chronicle what it’s like to be swept along by a world that “gets noisier everyday”. The record was inspired by a creeping realisation; of coming change, and a sense that D’Attorre was “losing contact with who I was before, for the good and the bad.” New needs and desires surfaced; old ones disappeared. Thus he began writing around ideas of rethinking yourself, and “acquiring a new conscience of mutation”. The darker realms of science fiction informed much of D’Attorre’s thinking here; Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury – ‘Mr. & Mrs. K’ was inspired by The Martian Chronicles – and Flannery O’Connor, whose The Violent Bear It Away proved particularly inspiring. All of this is perfectly framed by Clever Square’s shuffling, quirky indie, and cute melodies. Soft and worn around the edges, like the perfect flannel shirt, there’s a gentle, shambling quality to the music; “blue collar”, D’Attorre calls it. Guitar lines gently bloom, Fender Rhodes organ is sprinkled throughout, and the acoustic strumming sounds easy and unhurried. From the relaxed bustle and acoustic picking of ‘Hail The Proper Karl’, to the joyous, bouncy ‘Little Flaws’; from the stripped back melancholy of ‘Obsolete Epsilons’ to the arena-ready vibes of indie classic ‘Golden Wires’, D’Attorre has crafted a spell-binding, mesmerizing set of songs that delight on first listen and reward deeper inspection. “It’s a hymn to privacy, to the joys of secrecy, and solitude,” he says of Secret Alliance. That he wraps such heartfelt, profound topics in gloriously laid-back indie adds to the charm, and cements Clever Square’s status as one of Italy’s finest contemporary bands. The world might seem increasingly complex and be spinning ever faster, but Secret Alliance slows it down just enough to savour the scenery and think about charting a path back to something a little more manageable.

Billie Holiday's first recordings for Norman Granz' Clef Records present the vocalist at the top of her craft. Originally issued as a 10 8243; LP titled 'Billie Holiday Sings', this 1952 session placed Holiday in front of small piano and tenor saxophone-led groups that including jazz luminaries such as Oscar Peterson and Charlie Shavers.

Includes the song 'If The Moon Turns Green' from the same session but not included on the original LP.

Honeyglaze are the South London-based, Haiku-loving trio comprised of vocalist and guitarist Anouska Sokolow, bassist Tim Curtis and Yuri Shibuichi on drums.

 Born out of lead songwriter Sokolow’s un-desire to be a solo act, the group met officially at their first ever rehearsal - just three days ahead of what was to become a near-residency, at their favoured Windmill in Brixton. Forming a mere eighteen-months ahead of a subsequent eighteen-months of mandatory solitude, a parallel that’s both aligned and universally un-timely, Honeyglaze, at first appearance, are a group who play with chance, time, and synergetic fate, in mannerisms few others are able to do.

 Pricking the ears of seminal producer Dan Carey and his team of merry tastemakers, the Speedy Wunderground / Honeyglaze partnership would manifest into a dynamic that, despite not having met prior, quite simply just worked.

 Much like the eponymously debuted statements of contemporary folk-singer Bedouine’s ‘Bedouine’, ‘Crosby, Stills and Nash’, or, dare we suggest Madonna’s ‘Madonna’, ‘Honeyglaze’ the album presents to the world an audibly picturesque documentation of soul-searching, in all its figment’s of reality; a proclamation of cultivated intent which in turn creates a subliminal safe-space between relatability and self-projection, and creative-comradery paired with introspective artistry.

 A self-described “opposite to a concept album” that sonically encapsulates the who, what, where and how of their individual circumstances coming together as one, Honeyglaze is a meticulously transformative feat of which, in their own eyes, is a “quite accurate” sonic encapsulation of who the trio believe to be.

 This is storytelling at its most soulful, and ‘Honeyglaze’ presents human instinct in a manner that accepts all of the insecurities that come from their present adolescence, whilst acknowledging the formative maturity that’s earned when we allow ourselves to embrace the unknown, of our futures ahead.

 “If someone is going to find you special - then you want to show what’s most special about yourself,” notes Curtis. “Then you can do what you want from there.”

 Mixing the personal with romanticised ideals in ways that are simultaneously heart-wrenching, and humorous to a dead pan effect, there is no one trajectory for Honeyglaze, whose greatest ability is finding ways to present what’s written in-between the lines, in moments of beautifully well-versed clarity.

 In their own words: “Hi we are Honeyglaze, and there’s no time to explain.”

Produced by Moccio and recorded in solitude at his home studio, Lionheart continues the intensely intimate narrative begun on his acclaimed album Tales of Solace (released in 2020). “I created both these albums because I very much needed to, on a personal level,” says Moccio, who hails from Canada but lives in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. “With Tales of Solace I was dealing with necessary cathartic changes in my life. However, this album feels much more positive, like a rebirth.” Written in the throes of quarantine, Lionheart channels that sense of renewal by way of finespun melodies that Moccio describes as introspective

Ahead of the release of his much awaited debut album « blablablue » , Belgian singer-songwriter Delv!s just shares a new single, the dreamy “Human Trumpet”.

It’s no secret that Belgium owes much of its cultural prestige to its vibrant music scene. Lately, with much of the attention turned to Flanders, the Flemish side of the country is playing host to many exciting, genre-bending projects, including a tremendously innovative rap scene and a lively pool of electro bands walking in the footsteps of pioneers such as Soulwax: A tradition that Delv!s, one of the country’s most exciting newcomers to the soul, blues, disco-funk and pop genres, is set on honouring.

Delv!s is now ready to introduce “blablablue" to the world: a soul album infused with electro, funk and rock sounds, blended with a score of field recording samples; twelve tracks all penned by himself, unveiling a whirlwind of emotions that fuel the singer’s unique voice. The nostalgic brass arrangements and vintage-sounding harmonies may evoke Billie Holiday, Nina Simone or even James Brown at times, but “blablablue” nevertheless triumphs as a current and socially relevant record thanks to its topical commentary and diverse influences. Addressing many of the great issues plaguing the world today, including the sense of urban solitude, this is the first offering by a great artist, a sensitive soul also fluent in the language of love. Something to reflect on, unite us and even comfort us at times when we need it the most.

France pianist Vanessa Wagner continues her exploration of the minimalist repertoire by introducing her audience to pieces, many rare or unpublished, by acclaimed composers, young pianists, and genre-bending personalities from the ambient and electronic scenes. In France or even Europe, Vanessa Wagner is practically the only "classical" pianist to tackle this contemporary and timeless repertoire. Study of The Invisible features interpretations of pieces by a spectrum of composers that includes Suzanne Ciani, Harold Budd, David Lang, Bryce Dessner and Phillip Glass.

Described by Le Monde as ‘the most delightfully singular pianist of her generation’, and by Libération as ‘one of the most curious and captivating pianists on the French scene, Vanessa Wagner is able to balance parallel careers. As well as performing a classic solo, chamber and concert repertoire on stages all over the world, through her output on InFiné she is continuously exploring paths that are equally personal, but perhaps more intimate. Study Of The Invisible sees her breaking new ground in a musical tradition, in a way that no other ‘classical’ pianist in France and Europe currently does. Often described as ‘minimalist’, it’s a musical tradition that covers a multitude of singular styles and musical personalities and that spans generations.

Study Of The Invisible seeks out the mysterious world that lives behind the score, the imperceptible links that unite these silences and harmonies, but also the inner resources that this music can bring to light. With this record and this journey, whose apparent melancholy ultimately proves to be powerfully comforting, Vanessa Wagner continues to give a new scale to a music which proves to be above all radiant and luminous.

*are Vinyl exclusive tracks

Suzanne Santo has never been afraid to blur the lines. A tireless creator, she's built her sound in the grey area between Americana, Southern-gothic soul, and forward-thinking rock & roll. It's a sound that nods to her past — a childhood spent in the Rust Belt; a decade logged as a member of the L.A.-based duo HoneyHoney; the acclaimed solo album, Ruby Red, that launched a new phase of her career in 2017; and the world tour that took her from Greece to Glastonbury as a member of Hozier's band — while still exploring new territory. With Yard Sale, Santo boldly moves forward, staking her claim once again as an Americana innovator. It's an album inspired by the past, written by an artist who's only interested in the here-and-now. And for Suzanne Santo, the here-and-now sounds pretty good. Yard Sale, her second release as a solo artist, finds Santo in transition. She began writing the album while touring the globe with Hozier — a gig that utilized her strengths not only as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, but as a road warrior, too. "We never stopped," she says of the year-long trek, which often found her pulling double-duty as Hozier's opening act and bandmate. "Looking back, I can recognize how much of a game-changer it was. It raised my musicianship to a new level. It truly reshaped my career." “Defiant” - American Songwriter “a bluesy ripper that gets its sizzle not just from her dynamic vocals but from a dirty, undulating guitar line from Gary Clark Jr” - Buzzbands “On “Fall For That,” she digs deep to sing about the push and pull between needing human connection and solitude, chaos and calm” - Buzzbands “bold storytelling and introspective reflection” - CMT “Catchy-as-hell” - Glide “she digs deep” - KCRW “Suzanne Santo is one of those musicians that come along every once in a blue moon.” - National Rock Review “Santo takes ownership and power back with crass and candor, introducing shameless, self aware dialogue that opens the door for conversation that leads to real healing.” - Paste "spunky" - Premier Guitar “Southern-gothic soul” - Rolling Stone Country “vivid musical portraits” - San Diego Union-Tribune

Butterflies go through a four-staged life cycle: egg, caterpillar, pupa (chrysalis) and then adult as a butterfly. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly happens in the chrysalis where the caterpillar body dies to give life to a new, beautifully winged body. This album is an ideal soundtrack to this amazing phenomena, a representation to inner transformation and deep evolution.

Athlete Whippet return to Toy Tonics with an EP showcasing emotionally layered dance tracks and their refusal to stick to genre conventions. The duo are synonymous with sublime cuts that are just as suited to late nights and early mornings on the dancefloor, as they are to home-listening, this perfectly exhibited on the "Noguiera" EP.

The four-tracker is named after a remote place in the mountains around Rio de Janeiro where it was made on a creatively fruitful getaway in 2021. It's sentimental, joyful, bouncy, and futuristic, and showcases the duo’s musicality combining bass guitar and piano, with hardware synths, loops and fragmented vocal samples.

Robin explains - "Spending time in Brazil in recent years was a blessing. The nature, culture and musical heritage over there is beautiful. Mostly in solitude, as I ended up spending most of my time in a remote place in the mountains around Rio, music became the only real emotional outlet for a while. So in a way this is a record of dance music created as far away as we’ve ever been from the dance floor!"

Both from a live performance background, Robin and Avi met studying at Goldsmiths London and found their way to the dance floor via playing in bands, Robin a guitarist, Avi classically trained in trumpet and later on picking up the keys. Absorbing the community of South London, they eventually set up artist collective and record label Squareglass - a proudly established home for new artists coming out of the area. They’ve remixed for the likes of Rhythm Section, collaborated with Olugbenga, and their releases have come with reworks from Ross from Friends, Cameo Blush, Baltra and Seb Wildblood. In 2021, their hybrid sound found a new home with tastemaker German label Toy Tonics who released their "Vesta" EP in May, followed by a run of European tour dates including Funkhaus Berlin, Phonox London and Amsterdam Dance Event.

Wonderwall-Groove-Experimental-Soul-Expericence - CYRIL CYRIL from Geneva does it! "Another special band name - another easy explanation: Cyril Cyril are a duo consisting of two Cyrils. Cyril Yeterian plays accordion, banjo and myriad other instruments, and Cyril Bondi is an extraordinary drummer/percussionist with an experimental bent whose other bands include the wonderful Plaistow. Describing themselves as "muezzin without frontiers", they are fuelled by an irrepressible desire to travel beyond the obvious routes and find new places only they know exist." (Swiss Music Export) "A single word, a single cry can say a lot, as long as it is soulful. The sound of a duo reduced to its simplest expression - rhythm, a riff, a voice - can bear within itself an infinitely luxuriant musical organism - the double helix of DNA. Cyril Cyril, so real, so rich."

Bordello A Parigi is delighted to welcome back the triumvirate of Sergio Mesa (IAMNOTAROBOT), David Jornet (Strange2, AMPbEND) and vocalist Maia J. In 2020 the partnership, better known as Hypnotique, released the stunning 12” ‘La Pénombre’. Armed with four tracks of emotive synth-pop, the group returns with ‘Solitude’. Crisp beats and lovelorn lyrics characterise the title piece, a warbling melody weaving and winding its way through tear-streaked words. ‘Ce Monde’ takes a different direction. Keys are upbeat with just a touch of brooding while vocals are distant yet sensual. Maia J’s incredible vocal range comes to the fore on this record, nowhere more than in the deep and layered ‘Le Divan’. Drums scuttle and spike against flowing synthlines as lyrics smoulder with an inchoate intensity. The tone, and language, change for the finale. Arpeggiators rumble and the band shift to English for the elegance and energy of ‘Paralyzed’. Four beautifully crafted synth cuts from an incredibly talented trio.

Ichiko Aoba’s albums have only been available as expensive Japanese imports, until now. In November, Ba Da Bing will release Windswept Adan on 2xLP in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom, with deluxe packaging.

After creating her label, hermine, last year to celebrate her tenth
anniversary in music, Aoba released the most complex and rewarding
work of her career, 2020’s Windswept Adan. While audiences in
the west are only just learning she exists, her accomplishments are
unquestionable; she contributed to the soundtrack for The Legend of
Zelda: Link’s Awakening, was cited by Owen Pallett as an inspiration
(“I’ve never been so blindsided by a musician as I was by Ichiko
Aoba”), and has collaborated with the likes of Haruomi Hosono,
Cornelius (who met her only two years after she first picked up a
guitar and was blown away), Ryuichi Sakamoto, and recently Mac
DeMarco.
Ichiko Aoba’s iconic voice and classical guitar playing are
immediately recognizable, timeless sounds. Windswept Adan,
envisioned as a soundtrack for a fictional film, builds its own world with
sweeping co-production and arrangements from Taro Umebayashi,
which “recall the Wes Anderson scores of Mark Mothersbaugh or
the cinematographic swells of American composer Jherek Bischoff”
(Bandcamp). It’s the story of a young girl sent to the island of Adan, a
place where there are no words.
While international listeners of Aoba may not understand the words
she sings, and despite the central importance of lyrics in her writing,
it’s a testament to the power Aoba wields that one can resonate so
deeply with her work. No matter the breadth of her sonic palette, and
on Adan her scope is as wide and encompassing as Joanna Newsom’s
on Have One On Me, Aoba manifests an intimacy that makes one feel
in the room with her.
Ichiko Aoba’s work gained greater exposure in the past year as the
need for comfort grew while the world sequestered in solitude. She
has a rare musical gift that is matched only by her ability to hone it
into meticulous craft. Her music embraces and elevates alone time to a
generous and tranquil place. In it, listeners are invited to feel a sense of
consolation and possibility. The magic she imparts yields articles like
“Ichiko Aoba and the emotion of space during the pandemic;” in other
words, her effect is singular.

An album including 10 tracks created by Joe Hisaishi with various artists, based on a poetic note of inspirations written

by Director Hayao Miyazaki during the process of film production

Vocal: U-MI, Sizzle Ohtaka, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Mosieur Kamayatsu, RIKKI

Soul departure time. Drowning in a dreamlike state where drifting with the current is free movement. Driven by echoes of serious intentions and playfulness. The order of music takes you further. In time, on the floor, under the skin, melting measures and dimensions. On a way back to where the future of your comfort has dawned. Through zones of whispers and expanding beauty. On a memory lane while passing all your favourite things and sentiments. On a straight, gently quantized line through tunnels of love and liberation. To a vanishing point where the soul is exposed to a scattered radiation of joy, content, revival, liveliness, melancholia. Feels like an arrival, no detour or deviation. Soul: its vulnerability becomes a superpower.

Mourn The Light were formed in early 2018 by
Dwayne Eldredge, also co-founder of The New
England Stoner And Doom Festival.

Driven by his passion for thunderous, traditional
doom metal mixed with lofty progressive and
power metal leanings, Dwayne was hell-bent on
creating a band that could sonically push a
message of hope in spite of despair.

Following their highly acclaimed 2019-debut EP,
‘Weight Of The World’, and touring the US and
Canada on the back of this, Mourn The Light
returned to the studio to record their first album.

Entitled ‘Suffer, Then We’re Gone’, the band’s
debut album showcases a plethora of influences.
At one moment, Mourn The Light deliver crushingly
massive riffs, only to jump at the next turn,
galloping along with shades of classic heavy,
progressive and power metal taking hold and
leading the way, all the while focusing on incredibly
memorable songs with catchy hooks and anthemic
choruses.

For fans of Solitude Aeturnus, Savatage, Psychotic
Waltz, Trouble, Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus,
Candlemass.

LP pressed on green and orange splatter vinyl.

purple marbled vinyl

Produced by Jonathan Wilson (Dawes, Father John Misty, Conor Oberst), Erin Rae's highly anticipated new album Lighten Up is a timeless amalgam of classic pop, cosmic country and indie rock, recorded earlier this year in California’s Topanga Canyon. Three years have passed since the release of her critically acclaimed debut Putting On Airs, which drew high praise from publications from Rolling Stone to NPR Music. She mostly spent her time on the road, performing at Newport Folk and Red Rocks, sharing stages with Iron & Wine, Jason Isbell, Jenny Lewis, Hiss Golden Messenger and Father John Misty, before her touring came to a sharp halt at the start of the pandemic. The solitude of the road and then the pandemic created space for Rae to undergo a sonic and philosophical shift where she found personal catharsis in creating an album that reflected on her newfound lessons of self acceptance, alongside finding the confidence to offer social commentary on the environment, gender identity and equality. “My last record was a lot of self-assessment and criticism, and trying to kick old habits and ways of relating and not relating to people,” Rae acknowledges. “This one is about blossoming, opening up, and living a little more in the present moment. Fully experiencing what it is to be human.” With a renewed sense of agency, Rae also took a more active role in creating the kaleidoscopic soundscape that became Lighten Up, setting out to reflect a sound she calls, “an emotional pallet, I could get lost in.” Alongside Erin and Jonathan Wilson, who contributed various instruments, the album also features guest appearances from fellow rising star singer songwriters, Meg Duffy, Ny Oh, and Kevin Morby.

Robert Stillman's much-loved, homespun collection of Fender Rhodes improvisations receives the vinyl treatment from Kit Records.

Recorded to tape in the solitude of Robert's Kent studio, PORTALS is truly a candid window into the trance-like process of making: melodies, ideas and themes are added folded, concealed and revealed like layers of paper and paint, combining to form an intimately transportive sonic mural.

Most startling are the shifting voices of the Rhodes - from careening, glassy pads to strident basslines, curveball jazz breakdowns or kaleidoscopic marimba flutter. Keys players take note: PORTALS is a masterclass in restricted virtuosity. Quite how so many worlds are conjured from one instrument across the 35 minute duration of this record, we're not sure.

Recommended if you like Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Arthur Russell, Kali Malone. This vinyl edition of Portals features a previously unreleased track, 'PORTAL 8'.

Robert Stillman is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from the northeast United States. His music juxtaposes the archaic with the futuristic, incorporating influences of Jazz, Minimalism, American Folk music, and experimental electronic music to create a sound described by the Guardian as "lending an avant-garde shimmer to pre-modern American sounds."

Cardinal Fuzz / Acid Test are proud to present to you the debut LP from Black Holes Are Cannibals – ‘Surfacer’.

Formed around the uber talent of Chris Jude Watson (founder of ‘Snakes Don’t Belong In Alaska’) who in BHAC found a band to take his vision to the outer most limits. BHAC are a collective with a varying line and each time they record all the music is improvised as they let their collective and innate abilities guide them, but what does bind them are the touchstones of Drone and Minimalism that runs through the music they create or just plain HEAVY. Call them Drone Metal or Psychedelic it matters not as the music created is an immersive, all consuming and thought-provoking transcendental listening experience that awaits those brave enough to take the ride with BHAC.

‘Surfacer’ was recorded at First Avenue Studios in Newcastle by the band using a TASCAM DR40 and is the embodiment of pent-up emotions gathered and endured during lockdown as they zap out every ounce of feeling and anguish into this recording.

‘Surfacer’ is not an album for the faint of heart with 2 long tracks of transcendence that will challenge and push you to lose yourself in the sonic experience of the timbre / vibrations of droning instruments and throat vocalisations as BHAC weave together mesmerizing waves of sonic texture.

‘Surfacer’ draws influence from bands like Neptunian Maximalism, Qujaku, Neurosis and the visual work of Andrei Tarkovsky, Kenneth Anger and Larisa Shepitko which influence the energy and darker sounds of the music while still taking influence from more traditional psychedelic sounds and experimental places like Taj Mahal Travellers, Suzuki Junzo, Pauline Oliveros, Vahvistusharha, and Tōru Takemitsu aurally and visual energies from occult works like Jodorowsky's 'Holy Mountain', Helena Blavatsky and Hilma Af Klint's Alterpieces 1-3.

As Terence McKenna might have said – BHAC are best experienced when listened to in complete solitude in a dark room while you are doing nothing else. To experience this album to the fullest, you must not have any distractions. Just sit down, relax, plug in, and let this album take you up into outer space.

‘Surfacer’ is pressed on Heavy Black Vinyl and presented in a 350gsm Outer Sleeve with artwork that perfectly matches the music drawn by James Watts (Inspiration coming to James from an article on beaked whales being "more surfacer than diver" before we had that jam and thats what inspired his drawing of an abstract beaked whale skull for the cover).

Mathieu Harlaut has always had the audacity to push his curiosity to its logical conclusion, conjuring up unique sonic spectres. Verging on strange, these apparitions aggregate a myriad of influences and approaches combining DIY, scholarly appropriation and pop arrangements. Chamberlain, his alias, embodies the project, where classical, jazz, electro and soundtracks merge to form innovative musical compositions. Chamberlain’s vision emerges as he takes these diverse territories to create completely new landscapes. Evocative postcards of journeys to come. A present where influences and inspirations offer up the ideal framework for creating new horizons.

With his characteristic attention to detail, Chamberlain is a skilled craftsman and an alchemist in turns. With him there is no apparent "timeline". No welded joints. No stiches. The overall impression of Chamberlain's music is enveloping, finding just the right points of balance and energy to evoke a particular atmosphere. But it doesn’t diffuse atmosphere, it’s more like an ambient perfume. Chamberlain's tracks are like the many notes of a fine fragrance, infusions that elicit subtle and contrasting emotions. Be it the music lover's indulgent solitude or the sensory exultation of a shared club experience.

From its earliest utterances, experimental music has been particularly disposed to transnational and cross-cultural collaboration. Seeking the answer for a fundamental problem - how to transcend the boundaries of difference, distance, and time - it presents a means to find common ground and communicate through the elemental form of sound. Over the last 5 years, this precisely what the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has achieved, intertwining sublime sonorities across the geographic expanses between their respective homes in France and the United States. Their third album for Shelter Press, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ (‘A winter in the middle of summer’) - the first to have been largely recorded by Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma together in the same space - distills a mesmerizing pallet of acoustic and electronic sources into an open discourse of radically poetic forms, offering glimpses of warmth and intimacy waiting in the post-covid world to come.

Both veteran experimentalists with celebrated bodies of solo work behind them - each traversing the challenges of electroacoustic practice in their own singular ways - prior to their first recorded outing in 2016, Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma had only crossed paths in person once, initially meeting in San Fransisco during 2009. The mutual bond formed during that brief encounter flowered into their first LP, ‘Comme Un Seul Narcisse’, followed two years later by 2018’s ‘Limpid As The Solitudes’. Both recorded remotely - sending files back and forth, fortified by conversations on a vast range of subjects - these two albums were guided by impassioned conceptual nods to Guy Debord, Baudelaire, Brion Gysin and Sylvia Plath, while seeking resolutions for the challenges and unique possibilities that working at a distance provoked.

Where the triumphs of its predecessors rose from the bridging of disparate moments and divergent spaces, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ culminates as a celebration of closeness, a result of Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma working together in the studio, responsively in real time, for the first time. Recorded in Brooklyn during August of 2019 - a handful of months before the pandemic would impose chasmic distances across the globe - its six discrete works, carefully crafted and finalized over the ensuing year, evolve seamlessly across the album’s two sides, weaving a sprawling tapestry of sonority, within which both artists retaining their own voices and visions, while drawing each other towards uncharted ground.

Atkinson likens the recording of ‘Un hiver en plein été’ to have been akin to “a playground”, each artist “hungry for each sound, a bit like the rush in the Louvre in Godard’s Bande à part”, to which Cantu-Ledesma adds that the process seemed to have had “a mind of its own”, with both “along for the ride”. This organic sense of entropy and enthusiasm - a joyous exploration of the unknown - guides the momentum of the album’s evolving arc, as unfolding chasms of ambient space ripple with humanity, life, and fleeting glimpses of the actions that led to its material core.

Crafted from deconstructed melodic elements and drifting long-tones - laden with subtle nods to Indian classical ragas and free jazz - searching patterns of speech, textural elements captured within the studio and the outside world, and searching tonal and percussive interventions, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ coheres as a multi-faceted series of electroacoustic dialogues; nesting conversations between two artists working at the juncture of abstraction and narration, field recording and harmony, and the philosophical and phenomenological, in search for the meaning of friendship, and its manifestation in pure sound.

As the world circles the abyss at gathering speed, WIEGEDOOD have returned to provide a perfectly vicious soundtrack. Formed in 2014, the Belgian trio have built an unassailable reputation as purveyors of visceral and bleak black metal in its purest and most destructive form. Since unveiling their debut album “De Doden Hebben Het Goed” in 2015, WIEGEDOOD have blazed an unending trail for musical darkness, bolstering their burgeoning notoriety with some of the most apocalyptic live performances in recent memory, and producing two subsequent albums – “De Doden Hebben Het Goed II” and “III”, released in 2017 and 2018 respectively – which hammered home the band’s unique creative powers. Emerging once more, this time from the involuntary solitude of a plague-bound world, WIEGEDOOD are back with their fourth studio album, “There’s Always Blood At The End Of The Road”. A ferocious tour-de-force, born of frustration and the ever-burning flame of hatred for the modern world, the new record marks a significant departure for this most ruthlessly singular of modern metal bands. “Musically I think we’ve made our most uncomfortable record so far. It’s once again faster than anything we’ve done before, and more unforgiving than the whole trilogy combined”, says vocalist/guitarist Levy Seynaeve. “To me, it feels like a soundtrack, for a movie yet to be made. A movie about the filthiest and most disgusting parts of human nature and society, and about the struggle we lead within, trying to overcome the fact we are all made from that same filth.” “There’s Always Blood At The End Of The Road” is available as: Ltd. CD Edition, 2x 180g LP (with etching on side D) that come in a Wide Spined Sleeve and 2 printed Discobags, Digital Album.

Argentine producer Pedro Canale returns from a three-year sojourn with his long awaited third album. Originally coming out of Buenos Aires's famed digital cumbia scene, Chancha has notoriously broken way outside those boundaries to forge unprecedented mergers between Brazilian rhythms, Paraguayan harp, Andean mysticism and the solitude of Argentinian folklore - all processed through his own futuristic style of postdubstep.

Chancha's sound is without question truly unique and instantly recognizable to the point he has become a key reference point for an entire crop of artists that have begun to carry his genes.

Hailed by the Washington Post, the New York Times, Pitchfork, NPR and countless others, Chancha Via Circuito defies even the shrewdest of marketing geniuses. On one hand, he is something of a cult artist within micro-circles of electronic music, having been invited to perform at Montreal's MUTEK as well as the Roskilde and Vive Latino Festivals. At the same time, Chancha's music has found broad appeal outside of the avant-garde, most notably his magnificent remix of Jose Larralde's "Quimey Neuquen" which was heavily featured in 2013 as part of the final season of the critically acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. Fans of the show undoubtedly remember Walter White burying his millions in the desert, soundtracked by the wide and gentle grooves of Chancha Via Circuito.

Amansara is a natural progressing of Chancha's special strain of electronic South America. Lead single "Coplita" features the haunting vocals of previous collaborator Miram Garcia, while "Sueno En Paraguay" merges Andean folklore sounds with bleeps and blips and pounding drums in a way that sounds completely natural and ordained. "Jardines" features the driving vocals of Lido Pimienta merging with heavy synths, percussion and bells into an unforgettable track, while both "Tarocchi" and "Guajaca" ramp things up into deep, electronic dancefloor inna rainforest territory.

Art for Amansara comes from Argentinian psychedelic folklore painter Paula Duro who has crafted the look of all of Chancha's previous releases.

La Soupe aux Choux, a movie as famous for its cast as for the main theme of its soundtrack is now available on vinyl!
Discover the mythical electronic folk melody, composed and played by Raymond Lefèvre. Nearly 40 years after its creation, this theme still brings us back to its film and continues to mark the minds and ears.

Limited edition 12" dedicated to the Neve A Maggio song flavoured with four remixes. Three from Mushrooms Project and one with a 90's house style by Deep88.
Wrapped in elegant electronics and an international flavour, Sara's voice recounts the unusual in these days characterized by strong anomalies and cold solitude. Like when it snows in May, like when you want to pick a rose and instead find yourself blinded by a white reflection, completely out of place. Yet there is life, under that white; breath, pulsation, a rhythm that presses and makes you dance: a song that drags you away from a daily life troubled by extraordinary events, which become intimate and confidential, but still unique, like every single snowflake.
Archeo Recordings is a reissue record label that regenerates old, lost, obscure and forgotten rare gems of mostly Italian music but also all over the world of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
All releases are licensed audio tracks re-mastered in their original form with sleeves recreated for today but all based on the original images.
Archeo would like to make the music available to a wider audience of collectors, DJs, music lovers of a forgotten time.

Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and
the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount
Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria.
Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away.
Echoing a lighthouse, burying the faults of being human / Into things that we project upon the sky at night.

Industrial experimental bloody live set... The old sopund, down to the underground...

Best known as Hot Chip's clear-voiced frontman, Alexis Taylor also pursues a solo career as an introspective singer/songwriter, exploring distinct themes and ideas with each record. Today Alexis announces the release of his sixth and strongest solo album to date, Silence,

Partly about silence - and how we intersect with it, observe it, try to record it, and how we feel about it when it’s gone, as we remember it - the record is also about religion, transcendence, giving oneself over to something bigger than you, or beyond this world. “I’m not religious myself,” adds Alexis, “but the songs which deal with the idea of gospel music or religion, look at it from a distance (rather like the shaky hand-held lens through which we follow the action in Pasolini’s ‘Gospel According To Matthew’) and try to uncover its influence on music and on people in desperate circumstances.”
The genesis behind Silence started a few years ago with Alexis ruminating on silence as a subject and making plans to make a record of the sounds you hear in public spaces as people observe moments of silence. He then lost his own personal access to silence as tinnitus began in his right ear in 2019 at a Hot Chip show. As Alexis explains, “I started to think about what it meant to me to lose quietness, solitude, meditative head space - as that was no longer available to me.”
Mostly composed in enforced isolation, Silence is a beautifully rich and unexpected conceptual album that is also Alexis’ most accomplished solo record and one that has seen early comparisons with a notably eclectic range of artists including Mark Hollis, George Michael, Big Star, Epic Soundtracks and Maher Shalal Hash Baz. This record sees the first time Alexis has collaborated with Sam Becker (double bass), Kenichi Iwasa (horn, trumpet) and Rachel Horton-Kitchlew (harp), who due to lockdown had to work in isolation from Alexis. In one case Kenichi recorded musical passages which were then superimposed on songs he had never heard - in effect keeping the songs themselves silent from the playing until the mixes were played to him.

Branches Of Sun by Wyndham Wallace Like every musician, Markus Sieber is used to going the extra mile to make the music he hears in his head and feels in his heart. There aren’t many, however, who would – or indeed, could – get to work in the mornings by strolling across a frozen lake before settling in a small cabin high up in the mountains located close to the Old Spanish Trail in Colorado where he had set up a home studio. For most of an entire month, though, he’d begin his day by pressing “Record’, and end it by pressing ‘Stop’. The world outside barely existed. Sieber’s no stranger to solitude and frugal living. Born near Leipzig, East Germany, 15 years before the Wall fell, his parents moved to a remote village outside Dresden when he was six, spending his free time in the summer fishing or swimming in the nearby Zschopau and Mulde rivers and, in the winter, ice skating, sledging and skiing. It’s no surprise, then, that with a background like this, and in locations such as those in which he now works and lives, Aukai’s work is imbued with a sense of peace. Even if the album took another half-year to complete, this was done in an unhurried fashion: after a month, he returned to the cabin to “shape, carve and edit” the material, inviting others to contribute along the way..

Hank May’s debut record, One More Taste of the Good Stuff, is the story of a room. To be specific: it is the story of a sound-proofed practice space that his father built for him in the garage of his childhood home in Los Angeles, where he recorded and pieced together these eight songs. It is also the story of solitude. After spending much of his 20s living in New York and working at the erstwhile DIY venue, Palisades, May moved back home both to be closer to his family, and because he felt like he was stagnating artistically. It is also the story of a loss of a close friend. May’s best music friend, and biggest supporter, passed away from an overdose back in New York. He felt he needed to make him proud, and this record is dedicated to his memory. Back home, May was able to concentrate on his craft, and was finally able to take the particles of phrases that had existed in his head and turn them into art.

Moondust For My Diamond’ is the second album by
Hayden Thorpe, released on Domino Recordings.
 In contrast to ‘Diviner’, a critically acclaimed album
steeped in solitude and fragility, ‘Moondust For My
Diamond’ moves into a more natural visual and sonic
palette. Hayden is interested in, he says, “the meeting
point between science and religion, the grand struggle for
reality that shapes so much of our time.” Thorpe has made
an album that is galvanizing, reassuring, elegant and
seductive: it oozes Big Cosmic Energy.
 The pastoral evolution of last year’s ‘Aerial Songs’ EP
hinted at an expanding palette that reflected Thorpe’s
return to The Lake District, the natural environment he
grew up surrounded by. These additional influences seep
into ‘Moondust For My Diamond’, along with Hayden’s
involvement with Wavepaths, a pioneering project
integrating music into psychedelic therapy, plus ‘hybrid’
gigs and breath workshops with pioneering breath
practitioner Richie Bostock. It’s those surrenders,
experiments and collaborations that make this such an
enticing, sensory, soul-expanding album

semi clear green vinyl

"Since our debut release on YUKU, our perspective about the many creative possibilities open to us has evolved.

With "MAKTUB," meaning "It's written," we're clearly stating that it's time to dive deeper into our musical ethos and production. It represents a significant step in our self-discovery, and a big step forward from the debut EP.

On this sonic architect project, we managed to make a strong cross-Atlantic connection with the various features on this LP and make geographical boundaries evaporate. This genre-fusion release was formed in pure isolation and solitude from all sides, but the final outcome brings a feeling of even stronger unity within TRAKA, and also at same time preserves our personal individual creative identities."
- TRAKA

“40 years ago my international career started for real when I got
a call from the musical mastermind Thad Jones, asking me to
join his new big band project Ball of Fire in Milan, Italy.
“Guess if I said yes!
“Since then I have walked winding musical paths and I still do.
“As the pandemic started to spread, I got stranded at home in
Skillinge Sweden from 13 March 2020.
“Many many months later, I can present something I’ve never
done before, a solo performance. Only me, myself and my
trombone in a beautiful-sounding church not far away from
where I live with my wife Beatrice, Ingelstorp Kyrka.
“I do not really know exactly when the idea got stuck in my head
but I guess around Christmas 2020. Having spent a strange but
personally wonderful year being at home, I suggested a solo
recording to my wife, and she thought it was a great idea.
“I called the priest in the church, named Maria, and she
immediately said ‘Yes, go for it. I will see to it that the church is
heated and ready for you.’
“The first time was almost a shock. Such a beautiful sound,
making the tone of my trombone just fly through time and
space. Beatrice and I looked at each other in silence, knowing
that this can become something special.
“I picked a wide range of songs and hymns for these occasions
and it felt very special to be able to record it in a wonderful room
with only one person in the audience, the one I love the most.
“All the songs have a special meaning to me, whether they are
songs I sang in church as a child or just picked them up on the
way. One is even written by one of my ancestors, Israel
Kolmodin.
“They present a side of me that is always there, but not always
to be seen. I hope you like it.
“Love, Nils.” - Nils Landgren

The new instrumental project of guitarist Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy / Modest Mouse / All Smiles / Grace Meridian,) and songwriter/composer Jacob Snider, Small Isles inhabits a rare hypnotic twilight between motion picture music and incandescent cosmic folk.
At once a love letter to film soundtracks and a meditative balm for our troubled times, ‘The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea’ was recorded by Fairchild on a bare-bones mobile rig while on tour with Modest Mouse. It was recorded in the cracks of time between soundchecks and performances, from city to city, in darkened hotel rooms and over-lit backstage dressing rooms, giving the album a sense of intimacy, of stolen time and weary after-show solitude.

LIMITED BLUE WITH BLACK SPLATTER VINYL +DL CODE

Gestural Abstractions is the third full-length album from post-shoegaze duo Winterlight. After an admittedly difficult gestation for their second album The Longest Sleep Through the Darkest Days, this new album developed organically and somewhat swiftly from the moment the pandemic lock-down was initiated.

This mandatory seclusion allowed Tim Ingham to sit with his guitar or at the piano and play uninhibited. With daughter and bassist Bel returning home from university, her presence galvanized the creative process, which resulted in the duo writing their first song together: In Solitude. It is a song in which there is very much an equal display of Tim and Bel's influences and songwriting styles.
Gestural Abstractions is a focused dynamic collection of works teeming with expressive confi- dence; An upliftingly shimmering shoegaze leaning post-rock gem.

Few artists in the music profession are as unclassifiable as
Nina Simone. During her long career she tackled material from
a variety of styles, garnering an audience that included soul
devotees, folk followers, R&B lovers and even jazz buffs.
Embarking on this project, she joined a host of seriously
talented individuals: the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah
Vaughan, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, who had recorded,
and would continue to record, items from the Ellington
songbook for many years to come

The magnificent and incomparable Marianne Faithfull has performed five legendary concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival between 1995 and 2009. Each of these historic concerts were recorded.
Marianne Faithfull’s name is synonymous with the authenticity, artistry and individuality of the festival and this collection is a celebration of her unique talent.

The Montreux Years collection will bring together, for the first time, some of the finest moments from Marianne’s most celebrated performances.

Expertly curated by the Montreux Jazz Festival and BMG, restored and remastered in superlative HD audio; The Montreux Years is released on superior audiophile heavy weight vinyl, MQA quality CD and in HD digital.


Montreux Media Ventures (MMV) in partnership with BMG are working together to produce and release a premium series of albums and activities, curated from the unique Montreux Jazz festival archive; one of the finest music collections in the world. As part of this exciting new joint venture MMV and BMG have commenced work to establish a new series of deluxe artist collections under the new official Montreux Jazz records imprint. These initial collections; The Montreux Years will bring together the most iconic performances from the most significant artists to perform in the festival’s impressive five decade history.

The collaboration is an unprecedented curation project. The most extensive exploration of the official archive in the festival’s history. Expertly curated by the MJF and BMG teams and overseen by Claude Nobs’ partner and president of the Claude Nobs foundation, Thierry Amsallem, who will act as executive producer across the series.

The Montreux Years series is a celebration of Claude’s love of the artists and passion for the festival and are a fitting tribute to his legacy.

The BMG and Montreux Jazz music festival design teams will work in partnership to produce new and authentic creative, faithful to the festival’s reputation for iconic artwork.

Manchester UK's Space Afrika make music of what they term "overlapping moments" - oblique mosaics of dialogue, rhythm, texture, and shadow, half-heard through a bus window on a rainy night. Honest Labour, the group's first full-length since 2020's landmark hybtwibt? (have you been through what i've been through?) mixtape, expands the project's palette with classical strings, shimmering guitar, and visionary vocal cameos, leaning further into their enigmatic fusion of ambient unrest and cosmic downtempo. It's a sound both fogged and fragmented, at the axis of song craft and sound design, born from and for the yearning solitudes of life under lockdown. The album title is tiered, alluding to a legendary patriarch from co-founder Joshua Inyang's Nigerian family tree (who was lovingly called "Honest Labour" for his loyalty and resilience) as well as the nature of self-designated work, such as Space Afrika's music - a "labor of love" in its truest sense. With fellow co-founder Joshua Reid recently relocated to Berlin, the pair began sharing files last fall, piecing together poetic vignettes of looping haze and found sound, inspired by the notion of "records that leave an impression, and help the listener deal with their life." As the isolation of Covid compounded with the worsening winter, the songs skewed increasingly introspective and emotive, reflecting a mood of dissipating futures and the infinite nocturnal unknown. The artists cite two core motivations for Honest Labour: to transcend the sum of their influences, and "to show what we're capable of." Both ambitions are entirely realized. The collection's 19 tracks flow with a synergy and sophistication as rare as they are radical, untethered to the dusty dub-techno templates of Space Afrika's early years. These are interstitial anthems, expressionistic and open-ended, delirious but deliberate, attuned to the drift and dreamstate of the present moment: "Ultimately this is an homage to U.K. energy, and an album about love and loss."

Manchester UK's Space Afrika make music of what they term "overlapping moments" - oblique mosaics of dialogue, rhythm, texture, and shadow, half-heard through a bus window on a rainy night. Honest Labour, the group's first full-length since 2020's landmark hybtwibt? (have you been through what i've been through?) mixtape, expands the project's palette with classical strings, shimmering guitar, and visionary vocal cameos, leaning further into their enigmatic fusion of ambient unrest and cosmic downtempo. It's a sound both fogged and fragmented, at the axis of song craft and sound design, born from and for the yearning solitudes of life under lockdown. The album title is tiered, alluding to a legendary patriarch from co-founder Joshua Inyang's Nigerian family tree (who was lovingly called "Honest Labour" for his loyalty and resilience) as well as the nature of self-designated work, such as Space Afrika's music - a "labor of love" in its truest sense. With fellow co-founder Joshua Reid recently relocated to Berlin, the pair began sharing files last fall, piecing together poetic vignettes of looping haze and found sound, inspired by the notion of "records that leave an impression, and help the listener deal with their life." As the isolation of Covid compounded with the worsening winter, the songs skewed increasingly introspective and emotive, reflecting a mood of dissipating futures and the infinite nocturnal unknown. The artists cite two core motivations for Honest Labour: to transcend the sum of their influences, and "to show what we're capable of." Both ambitions are entirely realized. The collection's 19 tracks flow with a synergy and sophistication as rare as they are radical, untethered to the dusty dub-techno templates of Space Afrika's early years. These are interstitial anthems, expressionistic and open-ended, delirious but deliberate, attuned to the drift and dreamstate of the present moment: "Ultimately this is an homage to U.K. energy, and an album about love and loss."

Featuring Joep’s first three releases + bonus material, as a special Super Deluxe Vinyl Box Set of 7 LPs.

Maybe We Never Die, Anderson East's third release for Elektra/Low Country Sound takes the Alabama born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s seductively vintage voice in a decidedly fresh direction. The 12 tracks flow together with an overarching sense of ambience but maintain distinct musical boundaries. The energy toggles between a hunger for vulnerability in togetherness and a clinging to solitude as a romantic self-defense. There is consternation with the speed and volume at which the world operates and solace to be found in the simple act of getting up and going. And the beguiling title track, with its woozy strings swirling around East’s celestial falsetto as it curls towards the ceiling like smoke is, as they say, a whole mood; a sense of a single night’s dusk-to-sunrise contemplation. Collaborating once again with Dave Cobb along with longtime bandleader and now co-producer Philip Towns, East has found an enticing new avenue, one that maintains a connection to his past but keeps his eyes on the road ahead.

Maybe We Never Die is East's first new music since 2018's breakthrough album, Encore, which featured the Grammy-nominated #1 AAA radio single, "All On My Mind." Heralded by critics, The New York Times praised Encore as, “…an often lustrous revisiting of raucous Southern soul, rousingly delivered and pinpoint precise. He has a voice full of extremely careful scrape and crunch, but his howls never feel unhinged," while Rolling Stone declared, “On Encore, East’s influences meld seamlessly, stacking the album with Stax-worthy R&B grooves, gospel-blues ooohs and aaahs, surging keys and blasting brass.” Known for his magnetic live performances, East and his band have performed sold-out shows worldwide and have been featured on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and "CBS This Morning Saturday," NBC's "TODAY" and "Late Night with Seth Meyers," PBS' "Austin City Limits" and more.

Comes with POSTER and digi dowload

Destruction by IND (Artist) - English version below.

Ce morceau est une tentative d'allégorie de la situation actuelle, entre confinement collectif et confinement individuel, ou comment en etant seul l'on peut se retrouver confiné en nous meme, et comment ce regard sur soi peut se transformer en catharsis si on ose le soutenir.
C'est un peu expérimental, j'espere que ça vous parlera!

C'est l'histoire de quelqu'un posé chez lui, seul.Dans sa solitude l'anxiété monte, et pour tenter d'attenuer cela, il décide de sortir à l'extérieur.il passe la porte de chez lui, se retrouve dans la rue, sous la pluie, dans l'orage.Les rues sont vides, vides comme son intérieur à lui, et ce vide ne fais que grandir cette anxiété qui le prend.Il marche, explore, pense, se perd, et finit par trouver un batiment dont il ne connait pas vraiment l'origine ni le but. Ca ressemble à une usine abandonnée, mais l'est ce vraiment?il décide d'entrer, se retrouve a l'intérieur, il fait sombre, l'angoisse grandit en lui.Pour retrouver un peu de lumière, il entrouvre une porte qu'il avait aperçu en entrant, au fond de la salle principale, et sort dans une petite court intérieur, quelques plantes ont poussé. Au fond de cette cours, et bien qu'il sache pertinemment, à l'image de son intérieur a lui, que certaines portes ne doivent pas,ne doivent plus être ouverte, il trouve une lourde porte de metal et l'ouvre.
Devant lui des escaliers, qui le mènent dans la cave, dans sa cave, a l'intérieur de lui meme, là ou la lumière n'arrive plu.Et attiré par la noirceur il descend.
Ses pas résonnent , et arrivé en bas, il découvre ce qu'il n'aurait pas du voir.alors l'instinc de survie reprends ses droits, et il court, il court et s'enfui, remonte les escaliers, ressort du batiment et revient dans la rue, vide, mais en sécurité, l'angoisse a disparue, car des fois, se confronter a notre noirceur la plus enfoui, permet de la mettre en lumière, et ainsi la dompter.

his track is a kind of allegory, a trial to express the feeling of these weird times , the lockdown we live ,wich is as external as its internal...How the anxiety grow and how our internal vibe could be felt as empty as the streets around us while seeing nobody all day long.
This is the story of someone, at home.He feel the anxiety grow in him, and decide to go outside, but all the streets are empty,like himself. he walk and as he walk the anxiety continue to grow.Finally he find a building, unknowing if its a factory or what but its abandonned, ,he goes inside to explore, arrive in an indoor course, and see a door...being intrigued, he decide to open this door and to go down the stairs he have in front of him...The more he descend, the more the fear and anxiety grow, as he goes down inside his mental.Finally he arrive in the basement, and what he see is too rude for him, and so he decide to run and escape from this, from himslef.
he run run run, go upstaris, open the doors and arrive in the street, safe.And without any anxiety, because sometimes, to go face to face with our deepest dark side, let us put light on it, and so let us tame it.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday, in which Andra makes her feature-acting debut staring as Billie Holiday, will shed light on the innovative vocalist's embattled years as a target of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics--the unit sought to imprison Holiday on drug charges, a retaliatory action given her dedication to singing highly politicized songs like "Strange Fruit" and her efforts to integrate her audiences. In the upcoming film, directed by Lee Daniels and written by Suzan-Lori Parks, Andra stars alongside Moonlight lead, Trevante Rhodes.

Andra's iteration of the jazz-infused recording adheres to the cool, sultry stylings of Holiday's original. By stepping into her predecessor's persona, Andra brings the past to the present, adopting a vocal approach and musical sensibility that's nothing short of a classic.

The legendary Billie Holiday, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, spent much of her career being adored by fans across the globe. Beginning in the 1940's in New York City, the federal government targeted Holiday in a growing effort to escalate and racialize the war on drugs, ultimately aiming to stop her from singing her controversial and heart-wrenching ballad, "Strange Fruit."

Led by Oscar® nominated director Lee Daniels and introducing Grammy® nominated singer-songwriter Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday unapologetically presents the icon's complicated, irrepressible life. Screenplay writer Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, pens this intimate tale of a fierce trailblazer whose defiance through music helped usher in the civil rights movement. NAACP Image Award® Nominee Trevante Rhodes and Emmy® Nominee Natasha Lyonne co-star along with Garrett Hedlund, Miss Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Evan Ross, Tyler James Williams, Tone Bell, and Erik LaRay Harvey.

LP on white vinyl! What if a song was not a culmination but a singe, an imprint, or a crater left in the wake of creative process? On her new record "Jade", Pan Daijing composes at a different scale than that we've come to know. Since the release of her groundbreaking LP "Lack" in 2017, Daijing has expanded her operatic vision into a series of major commissioned exhibition-performances at institutions including the Tate Modern, Martin Gropius Bau, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Developed for full casts of opera singers and dancers, and reaching for an all-encompassing durational experience of intensity for both performer and audience, the development of these works was for Daijing as emotionally disarming as it was thrilling. In order to continue accessing her own limits, Daijing had to develop a place of sanctuary within her own practice. Its nine tracks written and recorded over the last three years, "Jade" is the sound of solitary release and refuge, of creative self-sustenance. Written without the imperatives of direct address to performers or audience, "Jade" speaks inward, while inviting a kind of rhetorical listening. The artist draws on materials familiar from her previous work: namely, ascetic electronic textures that rumble and pierce, and voice bent in irreverent directions. In place of catharsis, however, her arrangements here linger in tension, extending curiosity towards the delicate void that nourishes extremes. They toy with the minor capacities of song: repetition, chant, observations that conclude without resolving. "Jade" comes from a vulnerable place, tender as in an undressed wound caught in the midst of healing over. Vocals, mostly Daijing's own, arrive as wordless sequences of notes soaring alongside a drone, or plain laughter, or in a few places spoken word. What is said or sung provides fragments of experience and reflection. In the process of piecing together these fragments, the listener is confronted with the tender parts of her own. "Solitude is like an immense lake you're swimming through," says Daijing of these songs. "Sometimes you dip your head in and sometimes you lift it above. On album centerpiece "Let," she speaks to us over the sound of rippling water, returning between anxious scenes to a refrain: "I take my bath in the ocean." We are not just consuming Daijing's story; we are being invited to join her in the water. The album is mixed and mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Pan Daijing, cinematography by Dzhovani Gospodinov & design by NMR.

**LONG OVERDUE REPRESS - CLEAR VINYL 300 COPIES ONLY** “With Ela’s music I feel emotional, engaged… I can’t help but feel she’s always looking for a sense of belonging and it
seems to inform all the music that she makes. Glasgow must have more of that belonging feeling than most
cities because she’s spent the most time here, an exotic bird in a rainy city she maybe finds a lttle bit of comfort in. It’s
a pleasure to have her here, in this awful time to be living in Britain, her illuminations feel important and hopeful. A
stubborn light; someone making great timeless music out of the humdrum of the everyday.” - Stephen Pastel
Movies For Ears is a retrospective collection of works by Polish-born, Glasgow-based artist Ela Orleans which
navigates almost two decades of songwriting in the heart of the global pop underground. This remastered collection casts
an ear over what Orleans might call the ‘pop sensibility’ within her back catalogue. Released previously on a number of
small DIY labels, Orleans’ music coincided with the explosion of auto-didactic musicians finding their voice in the age of
the blogosphere, artists emboldened by the democratisation of music-making afforded by the internet. From the outset,
Orleans’ childhood studying formal music mixed with cut-up techniques, sampling, sound-art and experimentation to
create a distinctive signature cloaked in an innate melancholy and playfulness. Fully remastered by James Plotkin,
featuring extensive sleeve-notes and rare photos from Orleans’ archive, Movies For Ears presents an appraisal of the
musician’s work, painting a portrait of an artist with an uncanny ability to evoke emotions and ghosts of memories in the
listener.
Each song pulls sunshine from its surroundings, moments of pleasure plucked from eulogies. The Season employs a
hypnotic loop with Orleans’s prophetic voice heralding the season we’re doomed to repeat. In fact the singer is often cast
as the changing protagonist in her songs: on Walkingman, a hazy ballad heavy with ennui, the narrator is laden with the
world’s weight, forever pacing a groundhog day world blank, a pissed-off actor in a Kafka-esque melodrama. On Light At
Dawn we’re in a seedy kitsch bar-room go-go scene, a ghostly rock’roll romance with shimmering percussion, poledancing
in a Lynchian half-dream. Movies For Ears’ moods straddle memory and fantasy: scratchily invoking halfremembered
exotica, the flickering shadows of europhile cinemas screens, a delicately woven world anchored in Orleans
existential meditations on longing, intimacy, solitude and the search for love. These rich textures in every song don’t
overpower some crystalised moments of emotion however: on In Spring Orleans sings simply “I have been happy two
weeks together,” summarizing that feeling of elation when emerging from a depression, a long winter. It’s a moment that
perfectly illustrates the lightness of touch and clarity in the singer’s voice.
The power of the loop and Orleans’ weaving songwriting that breaks its spell is illustrated perfectly by I Know. Over an
aching chord progression, the vocal takes flight into bittersweet loneliness, Pachelbel’s Canon played at a wedding where
only one person shows up. The repeated refrain “I know, I know” ascends to the heavens as the chords descend to the
dumps and the listener is left in the middle, happy but not knowing why, maybe a little changed, two weeks together. On
Movies For Ears, Ela Orleans lets us into a secret: the rare moments of joy to be found in the joins of the loop, the spaces
between things, the spring after the winter are the moments that last after the day has faded.

Die weltbekannte Band aus Island ist mit ihrem elften Studioalbum, dem hoch emotionalen "Mobile Home", zurückgekehrt und veröffentlicht damit ihr erstes Album seit 2018. Das Kollektiv beweist einmal mehr die Meisterhaftigkeit, seine künstlerischen Grenzen zu erweitern, indem sie eines ihrer ambitioniertesten und kraftvollsten Alben seit Jahrzehnten veröffentlichen. Für ihr neuestes Album holten sich GusGus die VÖK-Sängerin Margrét Rán zur Hilfe, um ihren Stil zu erweitern und den Sound des Kollektivs so frisch wie immer zu halten. Das 9-Track-Album bietet eine Mischung aus elektronischem Rock, Ambient, Darkwave, Downtempo und Synthpop. GusGus besser denn je!

World-renowned group GusGus have returned with their 11th studio album, the highly emotive Mobile Home, marking their first album release since 2018. The collective once again prove their commitment to pushing their artistic boundaries as they release one of their most ambitious and powerful albums in decades. For their latest record, GusGus call on VÖK’s lead singer Margrét Rán to help expand their style, keeping the collective’s sound as fresh as ever. The 9-track album features a concoction of electronic rock, ambient, darkwave, downtempo, and synthpop.

After announcing a new album in October 2020, GusGus wowed fans with their first single “Higher,” offering a first taste of how VÖK’s impactful vocals mesh seamlessly with GusGus’ intelligent and powerful electronic production. “Higher” was soon followed up with the darker, downtempo “Stay The Ride” and the bright and energetic synth work on “Our World.” The three captivating singles each received equally remarkable music videos courtesy of founding members Arni & Kinski, the directing team known for working with the likes of Sigur Rós, Kiasmos, Ólafur Arnalds, Of Monsters and Men, and more.

Every track on Mobile Home doubles as a window into a futuristic dystopian world that has been overtaken by machines. A nod to the rise of technology and ever-growing uncertainty surrounding automation, the album explores themes of solitude, rebellion, science fiction, hedonism, pleasure, and anger. Swirling within this world is a disconnected, aching soul who is on the verge of slipping into complete dementia. Forgotten purpose and goals but continues to be driven by the hedonistic default program of material consciousness; sensually self-indulgent and engaged in the pursuit of pleasure alone. In Mobile Home, GusGus challenge themselves like never before, resulting in a wonderfully chaotic reflection of the ongoing war between soul and machine.

With Mobile Home, GusGus show the quality and sonic diversity of the singles pervades throughout the full LP, while preserving the melodramatic themes that tie its 9 tracks together. “Simple Tuesday” showcases the group’s aptitude for blending contemporary electronic production with pop sensibilities while keeping an optimistic tonality at the forefront. Meanwhile, “Love Is Alone” and “Original Heartbreak” offer a slower, more pensive take on synthpop, and evoke feelings of solitude and deep melancholia. “Silence” and “The Rink” boast some of GusGus’s more experimental production, each alternating between radio-ready vocal verses with inventive and exciting synth elements. GusGus closes Mobile Home with “Flush,” an instrumental score that leaves the listener riding high as they finish the LP.

Beautiful orange & yellow sunburst vinyl - Solstice '21 sees twelve bright lights of independent electronic music mark the coming Summer Solstice. In such dark days, the age-old practice of celebrating the move from shadow to light, feels steeped in a renewed symbolic power. Solstice '21 marks this significant moment with a rich array of musical offerings. Reflective, lively, and always powerful, this collection is spun with modern twists of an ancient thread. Rotator - This is the first outing under this moniker from Justin Owen, also known under the alias Licit, as well as being a protagonist in the world of modular synthesis as the man behind the Abstract Data modules; Letters from Mouse - "Bubbling analogue synthesis from Scotland." This analogue synth maestro and inimitable broadcaster (aka The Magic Window), boasts a string of quality releases, including the recent highly acclaimed album An gàrradh, also on Subexotic; Cub/cub - "Cub/cub explores the world in-between nostalgia and nihilism, analogue and digital, real and false; creating evocative and mournful musical collages." First discovered on Boards of Canada forum Twoism, Cub/cub's two debut releases with Subexotic demonstrated his considerable talent to mix fascinating texture with beguiling melody. With an astonishing follow-up album coming soon, his rising star feels unstoppable; Orbury Common - "aural ephemera from the home of the orbs." This mysterious duo from the West of England are blessed with delightful musical cunning; their brilliant debut on Subexotic lifted the lid, and this offering reaffirms exciting times lie ahead; Onepointwo - "Minimal electronics, abstract radio signals and dystopian soundscapes are proceeded from both digital and analogue sources." A creator of intricate yet powerful collage, with finely wrought motifs that repeat and build to create a shimmering psychedelic impact. This is Onepointwo's glorious trademark. Spell-binding releases already exist on Woodford Halse, Poeta Negra, Lotus, as well as an imminent powerhouse album forthcoming on Subexotic; Giants of Discovery - "Experimental electronica with the occasional noisy guitar thrown in." Giants of Discovery's ability to get to grips with the musicality of his subject, has lead to previous exquisite sojourns into realms such as Victorian cosmic horror and Greek mythology, as well as an equally fantastical, towering follow up album on Woodford Halse; Wonderful Beasts - "A Wonderful collaboration between boycalledcrow and Xqui." Their playful interaction finds ways of crafting acoustic fragments into unexpected kaleidoscopes of sound. With beguiling debuts on cult label Wormhole World (soon to be followed up by an extraordinary new album on Subexotic), there is a kind of breathless magic about everything they do; Dogs versus Shadows - Electronic Sound Magazine says "A rare example of gamekeeper turned poacher...a welter of impressive electronica." Lee Pylon's ability to straddle a wealth of uncompromisingly inventive creations, and his broadcasting prowess as the much loved Kites & Pylons, is already the stuff of legend. A multitude of releases across many labels including Subexotic, Woodford Halse, Miracle Pond, Third Kind, Submarine Broadcasting, Sensory Leakage, provide a glittering treasure trove of work; Counter Silence - A stalwart of Subexotic, Counter Silence's sparkling and wistful musical work very much stands alone in temperament and style. 2020's Pathways EP on Subexotic remains a precious oasis, imbued with a haunting solitude that lives on in the memory; Transient Visitor - "All music unlocked by Alex Cargill (C.O.I. Central Office of Information) and Martin Jensen (The Home Current)." These two intercontinental maestros (well Sidcup & Luxembourg) boast impressive solo back catalogues across many labels (including Castles in Space, Polytechnic Youth, Woodford Halse). Their newly conceived collaborative Transient Visitor project, brought about the superb TV1 album in 2020 - we can see the sparks fly again in this welcome 2021 return; Simon Klee - "Natural, Electric, Organic Psychedelic - Sounds, noise and psychedelic beats." Klee's playful alchemy engages the mind and spirit, as witnessed in a flurry of top quality releases in recent times (e.g. Subexotic, ANR, Woodford Halse), and there is a visceral joy in his work that is perfectly placed for a midsummer celebration. Klee also produces a truly excellent mixcast and increasingly essential tape label, both under the guise of Anticipating Nowhere; Rupert Lally - "Hailing originally from England but now based in Switzerland, Guitarist, Percussionist and Electronic Musician Rupert Lally began his career as a Sound Designer and Composer for Theatre and TV, before launching his solo career in 2005. Since then his releases have blurred the boundaries between electronic and acoustic music." Lally's consistently brilliant work is always a highlight of the electronic music calendar, including recent stellar works across many labels such as Spun Out Of Control, Third Kind, Woodford Halse, and Modern Aviation.

The Journey is the autobiographical account of Folamour's last two years, spent between airports and stages, London, France and the rest of the world, between crowds and solitudes, between highs and lows. The album, due out in June, is composed of metropolises and no-man's-land, inspired by moments that surprised and touched the artist. To express all these emotions, Folamour puts aside samples and computers to concentrate on writing lyrics, recording strings and brass, drums and vocals in order to be as close as possible to the moment. No limits of format, nor of genre, the total freedom to choose the tool adapted to the picture. This album is the sum of chance and encounters, an initiatory rite, as much in form as in content, the tale of a life with all that it can contain of joys and trials, as much in its writing and production as in its message, "The Journey" mixes contemporary sadness, isolation of artists, but also wonder at the simple pleasures of life and the discoveries it brings with it, it is neither a joyful nor a sad and disillusioned tale, it is the sum of all that and the rest too. Cover album adapted from a painting by Tomás Sánchez "Meditador en la laguna" from 1995. Edited by Koria